it's perfectly natural that a British award ceremony will be more likely to recognise strong british performances, it's the same at awards ceremonies the world over. The oscars certainly is biased towards it's own as well.

I've heard a lot of very positive talk about Bardem for his role in Skyfall,tbh.

Mirren was poor in Hitchcock but like Dench, they will nominate her for just about anything. But i have always thought Mirren was an overrated actress anyway. Apart from her work on Prime suspect and The Queen (the film and the mini series she did), majority of her performances are too average.